


sinking deeper, still reaching for the end of the light

by Irratia



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Alex Mercer Has Anxiety (Julie and the Phantoms), Alex Mercer's Parents Are Homophobic (Julie and The Phantoms), Alex Mercer-centric (Julie and The Phantoms), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crying, F/M, Found Family bc i'm queer, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Swearing, TW/CW, a lot of it, alex and two different scenarios on forgiveness, also a lot of it, bit of a spitey fic tbh, he deserves rights, just alex working through stuff, mentions of death of a pet dog, minor minor suicidal ideation, no bobby wilson slander in my fic, no funky fresh queer hijinks, no sunset curve parent's rights tho, yeet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:48:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29831394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irratia/pseuds/Irratia
Summary: Alex has always been a little anxious. And then he died.Before everything, he would have guessed that dying, being dead, being a ghost, might have some sort of impact on his anxiety, but it doesn’t. His non-existent chest still gets tight, as if something is constricting it, and his brain still runs a mile a minute, grasping for something to focus on, too often landing on negative things that make him spiral and his breaths short and his hands shaky.ORAlex, his life after death and almost dying again, and two sides of forgiveness.
Relationships: Alex Mercer/Willie (Julie and The Phantoms), Bobby | Trevor Wilson & Alex Mercer & Luke Patterson & Reggie Peters, Julie Molina/Luke Patterson/Reggie Peters, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 101





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Heyooo!!  
> This is a bit of a mutated version of what I'd originally planned but I don't mind, it's just longer than I thought it'd be. Hence the two chapters :))  
> Shoutout to meg from A_Tomb_With_A_View (& Wade ily) for putting up with my complaining about it, and also for the Mercer's first names.  
> All the issues such as dealing with alcoholism in the family and anxiety are based on personal experiences  
> TW/CW FOR CHAPTER 1: talk about anxiety, references to alcohol abuse and alcoholic parents, very small references to other substance abuse and suicidal ideation
> 
> the title is based on the song 'Demons' by Hayley Kiyoko  
> i hope you enjoy :))

Alex has always been a little anxious. And then he died.   
Before everything, he would have guessed that dying, being dead, being a ghost, might have some sort of impact on his anxiety, but it doesn’t. His non-existent chest still gets tight, as if something is constricting it, and his brain still runs a mile a minute, grasping for something to focus on, too often landing on negative things that make him spiral and his breaths short and his hands shaky.

Because somehow, even in his death, things just absolutely have to be complicated. Of course they do. He couldn’t have died and been a ghost from that day on, no, he just had to be stuck in a room for twenty five years, sobbing so hard his whole body hurts, unable to reach his friends who are calling for him in an endless, terrifying dark.

And then he couldn’t have just been a normal ghost, whatever that even was, he had to be visible to Julie, and visible when playing music. Which, yeah, still getting to play music, still getting to perform with Luke and Reggie was… more than he could have dreamt of. It’s still confusing, and terrifying because whenever he thinks he’s figured something out in his afterlife, something new comes along. 

Like Willie. And Willie is good, because Willie has answers, and a kind laugh that isn’t mocking despite the endless, stupid questions Alex asks. Willie doesn’t ask him too many questions about how he feels, and makes him laugh and teaches him things, and Alex thinks he can finally start settling into this new, well, it’s not really a life.

And things change again, because Bobby,  _ their  _ Bobby, is not Bobby anymore. Trevor Wilson is someone he doesn’t know even though he feels like he should, and it hurts, it just hurts. He buries that pain underneath anger, and momentary relief of being childish, and Willie, but then things go awry with Willie too.

Willie is warm, and good, and feels safe, and when they offer to help Alex is sure that things will finally be okay, prays to whomever is listening, if there even is anyone who does, that things will finally settle. Of course, with his life, things can never be easy, and Caleb seems too good to be true,  _ is  _ too good to be true, and Alex feels like he loses everything again.

Because the stamps seem to rip his afterlife away from him and his boys, and with it their second chance at making music, and being happy, and Willie avoids him, only flashes of brown locks and guilty eyes, a skateboard disappearing around a corner before he can catch up. 

Things with Julie, with the band go too well to stay the same, because apparently they’re literally fucking dying again, and have to put her through the pain of losing not only her mother but also them, which just puts an icecold dagger into his heart that keeps on twisting whenever she grins at him during practice.

He watches her grin at Luke, and light up at Reggie’s jokes, their eyes lingering on her when they think nobody’s watching them. Sees the two of them, still idiots even in death, twisting their hands together on the couch, leaning into each other for support the second they need it. It hurts, because they don’t have a shot, not anymore, even if they assumed they did when they fell into Julie’s garage. 

Alex is constantly on edge, anticipating the next jolt, the next hit that just adds onto the steaming pile of a mess that is everything in his life. He gets Willie back, in a way, with teary eyes and guilt wafting off of him in nauseating waves, with bad news and a worse outlook, no matter which route they decide to take.

He wonders if crossing over will be a step into just another mess, or if he might actually find peace, in whatever comes next. If he’ll actually be able to breathe again, without fighting to get air into his lungs, if he’ll be able to sit down without bouncing his legs or ripping at his cuticles, or chewing on the inside of his lip.  Briefly, he wonders if it wouldn’t just be easier to let himself be jolted out of existence, because at least then he’d be sure to not have to worry about whatever thing comes next.

But his friends, he reminds himself, whenever this dirty little thought, this horrible little whisper makes its way into his head. His friends, who’ve already lost so much, and will lose more, he can’t leave them alone.  Luke and Reggie, who rely on him, who he relies on, now that they’re only a trio instead of a quartet. The three of them share quiet moments, when the pain of another jolt subsides and the house is dark and it's just the three of them on the couch, huddled together, like back in the old days.

Alex’s chest constantly feels like the air around him has become dense and is pressing in, makes it hard to breathe sometimes, even though he doesn’t technically know if he even is breathing, how this whole thing works. (And figuring it out doesn’t seem worth it anymore, now that they’re only days away from crossing over.)

There are small moments, little rays of sunshine that relieve the pressure for just a moment. When he sees Willie, and finally manages to convey how he feels, although he’s still too much of a coward to actually confess, but Willie’s eyes search his face and there’s a small smile on his face, and their fingertips brush against each other. When they practice with Julie, and her energy seeps through the room, igniting every single one of them. 

And just when he thinks things might go according to plan for once, Caleb shows up, and fucks them over, and forces them to play in his house band, as if that might change their mind. He tries to entice Alex into leaving his friends behind or making them join with him, by dangling the possibility of Willie directly in front of him. But he’s closed that box for himself, grief for what he could have had still trickling out, but it's closed up and done, and Willie wouldn’t want this. 

They play the Orpheum, and it's everything he’s ever wanted, sitting behind his drum kit on the stage of their dreams, with Luke and Reggie, and Julie’s voice a beckoning call that has gotten them there. It’s exhilarating, and his body thrums with energy, soaking up the crowd. His eyes still stray to where Bobby was on the stage, 25 years ago, the spot vacant. And he thinks, despite all that he’s lost, if he has Luke and Reggie by his side, crossing over will be okay. They don’t cross over. He feels Luke’s hand tighten around his, and they share a look with Reggie, and he sees in their eyes, that they know they failed. 

The floor of the studio is cold and hard, but a steady thing that keeps him where he is, even as he curls in on himself, the jolts shredding his insides, even as he hears Reggie and Luke moan in pain. He hopes, begs whatever cruel force might be out there deciding their fate, that Julie is spared this. Which she isn’t, of course she isn’t, because Julie, golden, good Julie comes into the studio. And she saves them, somehow.

When everything is said and done, and the four of them have long since collapsed into a heap of limbs and tears, and he’s pretty sure he has Reggie’s foot pressing into his stomach, Alex allows himself a moment of relief. This gives him a chance, another chance, at an afterlife. He can find Willie and try to rescue them, and they can continue playing music, and maybe, just maybe, have an actual future.

Things have to get more confusing than the Orpheum not being their Unfinished Business, and Julie disappearing their stamps and making them corporeal to her already is. Because Ray and Carlos Molina find them in the studio, all four of them, and somehow, instead of calling the police and kicking them out, Julie’s dad sits them down around the dining table, makes them explain. And he  _ believes  _ them. Alex can’t remember the last time an adult believed him so readily and without questioning him.

___

  
Then, incredibly, things seem to look up for the first time in a while in Alex’s...existence. It’s not good, by any means. There’s still confusion, so much of it that sometimes he needs to lock himself in a dark room and just  _ breathe _ , to avoid spiraling out of control. They’re not human again. Julie can touch them, whenever she wants, and it’s good because she’s warmer than the guys are. It’s good for Luke and Reggie too, he knows, because he can see the way Reggie melts into her touch when she cards her fingers through his hair and the way Luke stops moving when she allows him to throw an arm over her shoulders. He likes it, too, because she holds his hands sometimes, wraps bandages around his fingers when he goes at his drums too long and they start to blister. He tries not to question it.

People she’s close to can see them, and touch them when she’s touching them. Reggie spends countless hours playing video games and talking about Star Wars with Carlos, and he perks up whenever Ray smiles at him or invites him to cook together. Luke joins them, most of the time, hanging back and watching Reggie with a soft look in his eyes that he now also shares with Julie. Alex likes talking to Flynn. She’s funny and smart and good at teaching him about what’s actually going on in the world.

The biggest surprise in that regard might be Carrie. Two days after the Orpheum they sit together in the living room, and the doorbell rings, with the Wilson’s standing outside. Carrie stops dead in her tracks, when she sees them, because she does, evident in the way her jaw drops and her eyes immediately flit to Bobby - her  _ father _ . Alex has never seen someone look more horrified in his life than Carrie does, when he looks at them and breaks down.

Amends are made between tears and rushed explanations, barely scratching the surface of everything that Alex wants to talk about, but it’s a start.

And he gets Willie back. It takes two weeks, during which they figure out that Caleb is possessing Nick, and Alex spends most of his time worrying, until they break into the Hollywood Ghost Club and find Willie locked in a dark room, alone and cowering in a corner. 

Alex doesn’t know who moves first, only remembers the desperation with which Willie claws at his shirt, gripping it so tight that the wrinkles stay, but he doesn’t do it any different. They cling to each other, and Willie heaves broken sobs into his shoulder, and Alex holds on so tight he’s scared he’ll crush Willie. They come home with him, and Julie sees Willie, and Willie is there, ready with answers and steadying hands and a tight grip. They smile at Alex the way Reggie smiles at Julie and Luke, and he plays with Alex’s fingers in the dark of night when they’re curled around each other. 

So things aren’t perfect, far from it, and Alex is still very anxious, and very dead, but it’s a start and he dares to let himself be hopeful.

\---  


It doesn’t last long. Honestly, at this point Alex shouldn’t even be surprised that he cannot have peace of mind. He still is, somehow. He has a boyfriend, who’s amazing and beautiful and takes him skating and to see the sunrise from the Hollywood sign, and who laughs at all of his terrible jokes and presses soft kisses to his forehead.    
He has an amazing band, even though the three idiots he calls his friends are still dancing around each other, all longing glances and soft touches, music writing sessions and lyrics dedicated to each other. He seems to have a new family, kind of, with Ray who’s kind and funny and doesn’t pressure him into doing anything, and Carlos, who’s funny and full of energy and talks about things Alex doesn’t understand (and Victoria too, even though she’s still taking time to adjust.)

So, in theory, Alex should be happy, able to relax more, should start enjoying things, because Caleb isn’t possessing Nick anymore and still at large but they’ve figured out that Julie has some kind of magical powers that even Caleb can’t really fight against.

Still. Alex feels as though something is missing, that there’s always an empty spot on the couch and he knows what that thing is, as well. There’s a Bobby-shaped hole in his heart and he knows, in theory, that he’s not alone with that, but Luke’s always been good at holding grudges and Reggie will probably always stick with Luke, and so Alex is the only one who stares at pictures of Bobby, no. Trevor Wilson. He stares at pictures of Trevor Wilson on the screen of Julie’s laptop and aches. 

He’s known Bobby the longest, met him in first grade, and became friends with the then taller boy immediately. They’d been best friends, the dynamic duo of their school, as the teachers said until Reggie and Luke enrolled. Then it had been the four of them, inseparable since the day Reggie had knocked into Alex and both Bobby and Luke had squared up and been prepared to fight each other, just in case.

Bobby had always been there for him - the others too. He’d been the one Alex went to first because Bobby was bad with his own feelings but pretty good with untangling Alex’s, and he’d helped when Alex had had his little crush on Luke, had promised him that their two-week relationship was not going to ruin the band. Bobby had always been there, with a strong hug and a dumb joke, and. Now he isn’t.

“You can just talk to him, you know that, right?” Willie asks softly, when Alex buries his face in their shoulder, after finally getting all of this off his chest in a late-night ramble. They place their right hand on his neck, rubbing small circles into the skin just below his hairline. Alex wraps his arms around Willie’s waist and sighs loudly. “Luke won’t like it.”

“Luke isn’t going to be angry with you for wanting to talk to your best friend. I bet he wants to reconnect with him just as much as you do, he’s just very stubborn, and probably a bit embarrassed that he assumed Bobby would betray you three like that.” Willie’s voice is calm, matter-of-fact, and Alex wonders once again how the fuck they’re able to read all of them so quickly. It’s a bit scary sometimes because Alex has parts, the anxious ones, that he doesn’t really want lighthearted, relaxed Willie to see. 

Willie reads him as easily as a book though, and he sees through Luke’s feigned confidence around Reggie and Julie, and Julie’s brave face on a day she misses her mom particularly much, and Reggie’s pretense that he doesn’t desperately crave Ray’s approval in everything he does. Alex likes to think that he can read Willie as well, not always, there are still pages that are stuck together, and words that are blurred with the lack of time they’ve known each other. There are still moments where he looks at Willie and wonders what goes on in his head, but he’s started to learn to read them as well. The move he makes when he gets uncomfortable, his thumb digging into his arm, the line of their lips when they don’t want to cry. The way their eyes glaze a bit, and he draws away from Alex when the nonsensical guilt he feels for the whole stamping fiasco takes over again. He’s still not as good as Willie is, though, but he’s learning.

“And Reggie is just too freaked out that he’s 42 and has a daughter now, so he sticks with what Luke is doing,” Willie continues. “I’m pretty sure that they’ll be open to talking to Bobby as well when you make the first step. They kind of rely on you when it comes to bravery a lot, even if you’re not aware of it.” 

Alex snorts and lifts his face from Willie’s shoulder to look at them. “They don’t, Luke’s the leader and Reggie has always been more confident than me.”

Willie rolls his eyes fondly and drops one of his soft kisses on Alex’s forehead, the ones that make Alex’s whole body feel like someone’s pouring literal sunlight into his veins, with how happy they make him. “It’s a tragedy that you don’t see yourself the way other people do. One day you’re gonna stop underestimating yourself and see just how amazing you are, Hotdog.” 

Their voice is soft and their smile is warm and Alex can’t resist the temptation to lean forward and press his lips against Willie’s for a moment. Willie smiles and tucks a few strands of hair behind Alex’s ear. “So are you gonna talk to him?”

Alex sighs and slumps forward, sacking against Willie’s chest with his full weight. Willie chuckles, kisses the top of his head, and then drags him down so that they’re both lying on the couch in the studio. Julie gets nightmares sometimes, and Luke and Reggie feel the only adequate way to help with that is to sleep in the same room as her. Alex has found the three of them tangled together in a mess of limbs on more than one occasion, and he’s not judging them for that. All of them still struggle with the aftermath of everything that’s happened, unsurprisingly, and Alex cannot fall asleep if he’s not touching someone, either his boys, or Julie, or Willie. He feels like his soul might just drift away when it’s unguarded and alone. Willie also doesn’t like being alone, which is why it’s kind of established that either Luke and Reggie stay with Julie and Alex stays with Willie, or all six of them build a blanket fort in the studio and cuddle up in there together.

Whenever they do that Alex thinks it might be his favourite way to fall asleep, with his favourite people around him, but right now he savors the quiet of the studio and the only sound being Willie’s breathing. When it's all six of them someone is always shuffling to get more comfortable and Reggie cannot stop giggling, and Julie hums until she falls asleep. Plus, there’s always the feeling of an empty space, one that cannot be filled no matter how hard they try. Bobby. Which brings Alex back to Willie’s question.

They’re looking at him, head propped up by a few pillows and his hand still in Alex’s neck, playing with the short hair there. It feels nice, and Alex props his chin up on the back of his hand so it doesn’t dig into Willie’s ribs. Willie doesn’t press on, just raises an eyebrow slightly in question, and Alex knows he’s ready to drop the topic if he asked. “I… I don’t know. I think so. I really, really miss him and I just... You really think Luke and Reggie wouldn’t be mad?”

It’s a bit dumb, Alex thinks, that he’s asking Willie for reassurance about two guys he’s known basically his whole life, but. He just needs the reassurance sometimes, and with the way anxiety has been pulsing under his skin for the last few days because thinking about something else other than Bobby has been exceptionally hard, he needs it a bit more.

Willie seems to understand. Or, well. Not really  _ understand _ , but they get where Alex is coming from. “They won’t be, I promise.”

“Then I think I’m gonna try and talk to him tomorrow,” Alex says after a beat of silence. Willie’s smile widens, and they look proud. “Then you should try and get some sleep, Hotdog.”

___  


  
Alex stares at the doorbell and clenches his hands into fists. He’s been in front of Bobby’s mansion - the fucker has a  _ mansion  _ \- for almost an hour now. He waited for Julie to leave for school, so Carrie wouldn’t be home either, and for Reggie and Luke to settle down in their songwriting session. Willie had accompanied him to the street where Bobby lives and given him a reassuring smile and a kiss for good luck. And then Alex had spent half an hour standing in front of the gate, working up the courage to poof to the actual front door, to ring the doorbell.

That’s where he’s been pacing for maybe twenty minutes, trying to keep some sort of script straight in his head, so he doesn’t rush into this completely unprepared. How the fuck is he supposed to greet his best friend who thought he was dead for the past 25 years? How the hell does he behave around a man he actually barely knows, he hasn’t seen grow up past 17?

Alex rakes his hands through his hair, clenches and unclenches his fists, and takes a deep if shaky, breath. His finger trembles when he reaches out, hovering over the button for a few seconds. He presses his eyes shut and rings.

He’s pacing again when the door opens, and stops dead in his tracks. Bobby - Trevor? stares at him, wearing loose pants and a white shirt. His face goes pale the second his eyes fall on Alex, and his knuckles are white from how strong he’s holding onto the door. A big block of ice drops into Alex’s stomach and settles there, heavy and freezing him in place. Seconds tick by, in which they stare at each other, not saying anything. Then Alex finally manages to move again, giving an awkward little wave. “Hi, Bobbert.”

The man exhales shakily, his shoulders slumping, and something between amusement and grief plays over his face. 

“Can I come in?” Alex shuffles awkwardly on his feet, twisting his hands together, avoiding direct eye contact. Bobby, or is it Trevor now because he can’t find any traces of  _ his  _ Bobby in him? nods and steps aside. Alex hurries inside, and toes his shoes off basically immediately, remembering how much he’d always insisted on not tracking dirt all through the house. Then he stands there, not knowing what to do with himself, where to look, whether he should follow Bob- Trevor into the house or not. He decides to trail a few feet behind the man and then ends up standing in the gigantic living room, tugging on his bracelet. “Don’t just stand there, sit down, Lexi.”

Tears shoot into Alex’s eyes, hot and pricking, threatening to spill over any second, but the soft tone and the nickname, the fucking nickname that only Bobby had ever used for him, suddenly  _ hurt _ . He wipes at his eyes, and perches on the edge of the couch, the fabric soft beneath his hands. Bobby, he’s pretty sure it’s still his Bobby, lets himself fall down on the other side of it, so they’re facing each other. His eyes also gleam in the bright daylight streaming in from the gigantic windows.

“Your house is nice,” Alex says, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs, not knowing what else to do. Bobby snorts. “Since when are you good at small talk?”

Alex feels a smile tug on his lips and he sees that mirrored on Bobby’s face, only for a second. “I’m not, I just...” he sighs.

“You don’t know where to begin,” Bobby finishes. Alex nods. Silence settles again, and they keep staring at each other, both of them undoubtedly trying to figure out how to proceed, how to process that the other is here. 

“I’m sorry,” Alex says finally. Bobby’s gaze snaps up from where he’d been studying the floor back to Alex. “I- I should have come sooner, but there was so much shit going on with- Fuck, with so many different things and I was scared to talk to you because it’s been 25 years, for you, and you’ve changed so much, and? I just…”

Alex trails off, not knowing where to even start with untangling all of this, and Bobby, his breath getting shorter.

“Hey, take a deep breath, yeah? It’s… it’s fine. I get why you guys don’t want to talk to me. Hell, I didn’t know if I wanted to talk to you, and it’s been… it’s been hard the last few weeks, and I could have called Ray, but Care still has this thing about Julie, and she’s mad at me enough as is. I get it.” Bobby reaches out for him, only a moment, then pulls his hand back. Back in the day he would have hesitated only inches away from Alex’s hand or his arm, or shoulder, to ask if physical contact was okay, but now he doesn’t get far. Alex’s heart clenches painfully, because shit, there really are 25 years between them now. 

“You have a daughter now,” he says, because that’s still something that boggles his mind. “How the fuck did that happen? You were the acest person I knew.”

Bobby shakes his head and makes a sound that’s probably supposed to be a laugh but just sounds choked. “I made a series of very bad decisions and ended up having a one-night stand with her mother,” he says, then pauses for a second and looks Alex dead in the eye. “It was awful, but…”

He trails off again, and his features soften into an expression that’s different because the face wearing it is so different, but that Alex still remembers clearly. Bobby used to look like that when he gently tugged the pen out of Luke’s grasp, who’d fallen asleep on the table again. When he dragged a blanket over Reggie who’d crept into the garage at some point during the night, curled up in an armchair. He’d used to look at Alex like that when he sat down next to him and began gently coaxing him into more regular breathing.    
It’s Bobby’s look of love. 

“Carrie saved me, you know. I held her directly after her birth, and she looked up at me with these gigantic brown eyes that she could barely hold open and clenched her tiny hand around my finger and I just… I just knew I had to do it for her.”

Alex tries to swallow the lump in his throat, as he watches Bobby talk about his daughter. His voice is soft, and there’s a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I know she can be… a bit difficult sometimes,” Bobby continues. “Her mother wasn’t a good influence, until she left her, and she’s taken the loss of Rose hard. We all have. She works so, so hard for everything and she misses Julie and she’s almost as bad as me at voicing her feelings and being honest about hurting. But she’s a good one, Lex. She really is, and I hope she and Julie can reconnect sometime.”

“You really love her, huh?” Alex manages, and his voice sounds choked. His thoughts are a mess, and his emotions a fucking wreck, but he thinks he likes seeing Bobby like this, talking about his daughter like she’s the most precious thing in the world. To him she probably is. Bobby nods. “Yeah. I’d do anything for her.”

“I’m sure she knows it,” Alex says, and Bobby smiles softly, nodding. “I try my best.”

The air is weird in the room, both of them a bit more relaxed but not too sure how to interact with each other. Alex clears his throat uncomfortably. He fiddles with his hands, and Bobby does the same, and the glint of silver on his left pointer finger catches his eye. “Is that my ring?”

Bobby looks surprised, for a second, then nods slowly. Alex studies him more closely and realizes he knows one of the necklaces and three bracelets Bobby’s wearing. They’re Reggie’s and Luke’s. “You-,” he swallows, tries to stop his voice from shaking. “You kept our stuff?”

“What the fuck was I supposed to do, Alex? I watched you three die on what was supposed to be the biggest night of our lives, and instead of coming home as the four of us, I was on my own. I had to identify your bodies!” Bobby doesn’t sound angry, or aggressive, but his voice still swells, and his face twists in pain, and Alex can’t look him in the eyes. 

“Basically my whole life I had one of you by my side, and then I didn’t anymore, and all I had left was your stuff, and our songs and- Fuck,” his voice cracks, and a sob escapes Bobby’s throat, and Alex wants nothing more than to move forward and reach out and hug him - hug his best friend - but being corporeal is still tricky with anyone but Julie and things are so goddamn weird that he doesn’t know if Bobby actually wants him to. 

“It was awful, Alex. Fucking awful. I don’t know if I would have lived if Rose hadn’t been there, and it was hard enough with her. I-” Bobby stops to take a breath, and tears leave wet marks on his cheeks.  “I became like  _ them _ , for a while. Couldn’t get through a fucking day without a few drinks, and couldn’t go anywhere near music because I just kept seeing you everywhere, you know?” Bobby lets out a bitter laugh. “I wished for this moment for years, you know? That you three would come back as ghosts, so I wouldn’t be so alone, kept imagining your voices everywhere, and seeing you just around the corner. And the only way to not feel like dying was drinking, and I fucking hated it because they always did it, and I didn’t wanna become like them, and I… the night I met Carrie’s mom I was absolutely out of it. Other stuff was involved, too, and I just. I wanted it all to stop, you know?”

Alex doesn’t even realize he’s also crying until tears drip onto his hands. Bobby keeps going, his voice thick with tears, and heavy with the grief he’s been dealing with for 25 years. Alex wishes he could help lift some of it, somehow. “When she told me she was pregnant I decided that that was my signal to clean up my act. I didn’t… I didn’t want to be a father like mine was. Ray and Rose helped me find a therapist, and I sobered up, which was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, apart from you guys’ funeral, but. It  was worth it. And I decided to make music again, so I recorded our songs, and finally went through our stuff in the studio, and kept some of yours. Dr. Crystal says it helps me feel secure about not forgetting you but also allows me to move on with my life.”

“I know… I know you guys think I stole the music and didn’t credit you, but-,” Bobby looks at him now, and even though he’s crying, and Alex is crying as well so his sight is blurry, he can see the resolution on Bobby’s face. “I don’t think you can blame me for not thinking you’d come back as ghosts 25 years after… everything. I thought I was just going to live my life with Carrie, and try to write my own music again, and get our stuff out into the world, and that I’d die when I’m old, and maybe see you guys again in whatever comes after death if you aren’t ghosts. But I didn’t want to forget you, so yeah, I kept some of your stuff.”

Alex sniffs and wipes his nose with the back of his hand, and nods. “I get that. We all do, we just… it felt really weird when we found out that you recorded our music, and Julie didn’t say anything about us, like. You giving us credit or telling her about us.”

Bobby laughs, but it’s not a nice sound. It’s laced with tears, and bitterness and sounds a bit cruel, but that might just be Alex overinterpreting things. He can’t read this version of Bobby anymore. “Yeah, ‘cause that would have gone over great. ‘Hey, Julie, all these songs you like? Yeah, I wrote them with my bandmates who I watched die before a really big gig, want to hear about all the trauma I got from it?’ Rose would have killed me.”

“I-” Alex starts, feeling like an idiot, because of course, of  _ course _ , Bobby didn’t say anything, how could he anyway, to a child, but Bobby knew him. Still does, maybe. He can still read Alex’s expressions, apparently, because he shifts towards him, voice gentler again. “It’s okay. I don’t even want to imagine what it felt like to come back into the world we live in now, and not having changed, and seeing how things changed- how I changed. I can… I can understand why you guys were so angry at first. I would have been too, I think.”

Alex reaches out tentatively, unsure if it will work this time, or if it won’t, like it so often doesn’t with Ray, and Carlos, and Flynn. He tries to keep his tone more steady than he feels. “Damn Bobbert, since when are you so in tune with your feelings?”

“Since I had to go to therapy for almost two decades, you asshole,” Bobby says, and Alex can hear the strain in his voice, that they’re both trying to keep their cool, even though they’re crying. There’s a storm raging inside of Alex, that’s making it incredibly hard to pick out single emotions and single thoughts he can voice. There’s the overarching grief for Bobby, and for losing so much of him, and the desire to just hug him, the grief for himself, for how much he lost and how much he missed and. He’s unsure whether he can actually voice it, but the affectionate tone in which Bobby insults him is so familiar, so painfully familiar that something in him breaks. 

Alex lurches upward, forward, stumbling, and Bobby, on reflex, just in the old days when he always had to make sure Alex didn’t fall over his own feet or a curb or amp cables, reaches out. They make contact.

Alex doesn’t really feel relieved, doesn’t have the capacity to feel relieved right now, when he doesn’t fall through Bobby, he doesn’t even know how to describe how he feels. It’s too much, all at once, different from when he gets really anxious and has panic attacks, but it’s still too much. He just throws his arms around Bobby, and Bobby hugs him back, pulls the both of them into a standing position. He’s taller than Alex now, when the fuck did that happen? His arms are heavy and comforting across Alex’s back and shoulders, and he still hugs the same way he did before everything. 

He’s all heavy arms and strength pulling Alex in and holding him in place, face buried in his shoulder and not letting go. Alex’s hands grab the fabric of Bobby’s shirt, and he can feel him do the same thing with his hoodie, fabric bunching and Alex doesn’t mind. He buries his face in Bobby’s shoulder, feels the man shaking under him. “I missed you,” he manages, and then he cries.

Bobby has always been good at hugs. Reggie is the best to go to when Alex needs a pep talk, and Luke talks a mile a minute, so he’s great as a distraction when Alex wants to not think about anything. Julie’s a great listener, and Willie gently encourages him to talk through his feelings, but Bobby has always been best at hugs, and somehow saying the exact right thing, or nothing at all.

Right now the exact right thing is a broken sob of an “I missed you too, Lexi. So fucking much.” and a tightening of the hug, and the quiet that follows. It makes Alex try to pull him in even tighter, and tears continue to flow, and the pain is still there and still poignant, biting and numbingly cold. They hold onto each other, and they cry, and the hug slowly, in tiny drops and bits, starts warming up the cold pool inside of him.

He loses track of time. But he doesn’t let go of Bobby. He doesn’t want to, ever again, even if they do eventually.

“So,” Bobby says, reclining back on his couch, and looking miles more relaxed than he did when Alex entered the house. “Have the two idiots finally figured their shit out?” 

Alex snorts and shakes his head, and Bobby sighs. They’ve been watching Luke and Reggie dance around each other for a while, and somehow, despite all the touching and writing songs for each other and staring at each other with the most obvious heart eyes, they still hadn’t figured it out. “With Julie in the mix I’m hoping they will soon, though.”

Bobby stares at him blankly for a second then pulls a face. “God, this is weird. My childhood best friends want to date the girl I watched grow up and took on holidays. Technically you’re all 42 now as well, this is…”

Alex nods, relieved that finally, someone shares the feeling that all of this is just kind of weird.    
“Technically we’re still 17,” he says. Bobby scrutinizes him for a moment, then shakes his head. “You’ve never been great at maths, but even you know that more time has passed than that.”

“Well, technically it has,” Alex starts, then considers for a moment. They’ve not actually told Trevor about the dark room, only that they came into their ghostly existence fairly recently. “When we… when we died we just floated out of the ambulance, and suddenly there was this weird dark room where we could hear but not touch each other, and it felt like just an hour and suddenly our song played and we fell into Julie’s studio. And that was that. We didn’t even know 25 years had passed until she showed us her phone with an article about our deaths.”

Silence hangs between them for a moment, and Alex watches Bobby’s face as he takes the words in, nods slowly trying to find an explanation. He’d always been like this, had always tried to find a logical solution for things, and most of the time he’d managed to do it. This time wouldn’t bring up any answers for him, though. Alex decides to spare Bobby from overthinking. “My- uh. Willie- A friend of mine, he’s also a ghost and he also doesn’t really have an answer to things. They’re kind of an expert on most ghostly things,” he stutters at first, stumbling over what to call Willie in front of Bobby, not because they haven’t put a label on it yet, or he doesn’t want to share about Willie, but because he doesn’t really want to pile even more shit onto Bobby today. Although it seems like he might have no choice because his face heats up and Bobby leans forward, an interested look on his face and a knowing glint in his eyes. “Your Willie? Who’s that?”

Alex looks away from his face, Bobby wearing the same damned expression he always shared with Luke and Reggie, or Alex, whenever any of them had a little crush. He laces his fingers together and tries to keep the smile from his face, but it fights to be there. He can’t not smile when talking about Willie. “They’re my... he’s my boyfriend. He’s pretty great, and really pretty, and helped me, and the guys, a ton when we came back.”

Bobby’s smile is wide and genuine, and it warms Alex from inside out, the look of pride and happiness familiar and somewhat bittersweet. Despite their reconciliation things are still so, so weird, this Bobby still wears another face and has changed more than just appearance-wise. Alex can see the cracks in this man’s appearance, the mended scars of the past 25 years, and bits and pieces of the boy he knew, that glint through in rare gold. But he’s still different, and still somehow the same, and this smile, this moment they share, somehow makes it more clear. 

Alex has missed so much in Bobby’s life, and he’s grieving for all the things they never got to do together, the shattered dreams that seemed to crunch under his feet with every step he’s taken in this house, that glint around them as a broken but beautiful reminder of what they never got to be. He’ll grieve all the lost moments for as long as he exists, he’s pretty sure, but he realizes that Bobby has also missed important things. Not as many, for obvious reasons, but Alex getting into a serious relationship for the first (he hopes the last, as well) time has always been a pretty big thing for them.

Bobby seems to feel it too, his smile slips for a second before he puts it back into place. “Tell me about them.”

Alex does, and along the way he recaps most of what happened since they came back. He tries to leave out the bad things, as much as he can anyway. Rambles on about Willie for a long while, and how stupid Luke and Reggie and Julie are being, tries to avoid Caleb and the jolts as much as he can. He doesn’t talk about how bad his anxiety’s been, or how much the jolts really hurt, or how afraid he’s been of just about everything that happened up until now. Alex thinks he doesn’t need to, Bobby still knows him well enough to know all that, or at least have an inkling of it. 

His throat feels a bit dry when he’s done, and he doesn’t know where to go from there, searching for words because he’s said more than he wanted to, and there are still questions he wants to ask, but doesn’t know how to. So he just twists one of his rings around his finger and stares out at the pool and the garden, watching the light dance over the water, and waits for Bobby to say something. He’s the adult now, after all. 

“Will I get to meet Willie at some point, then? Gotta meet the ghost that ran one of my best friends over,” Bobby finally says, and Alex looks back at him to see an uncertain, but hopeful smile. He nods, then catches himself. “I’ll try to get you two to meet, but Willie still isn’t always visible to other lifers apart from Jules, so I don’t know if you’d actually be able to see them. You should, he’s so pretty, but I don’t know if you can.”

“Christ, Alex, you’re absolutely gone for him,” Bobby teases and grins when Alex tries to protest. He gets up. “I’m getting something to drink and a snack, do you want anything?”

“I can’t really eat. It works sometimes but the when is a guessing game.”

Bobby does a double-take, then nods, and gestures for Alex to follow him into the open kitchen, where he hops onto a counter and watches the man rummage through his fridge. “Is it okay if I eat in front of you?” he asks, and Alex nods immediately. He misses food sometimes, sure, but it’s not as bad as he thought it would be. Bobby gives him a thumbs up. “How’s Luke dealing with that?”

“Not well, he’s cried over not being able to eat Tía Victoria’s tamales a few times already, and he misses pizza a lot,” Alex says and laughs when Bobby sighs. “Yeah, that’s Luke.”

His face falters a bit, and Alex watches in silence as Bobby makes a sandwich and gets himself a glass of what looks like a very healthy but disgusting smoothie. “Are they… do they really not want to see me?”

Alex’s heart clenches at that, painfully. He remembers Bobby once telling him in the cover of a black and rainy night, that he’d always felt like he was going to be the one left behind. And after 25 years without them, seeing only Alex seek him out surely didn’t help with that. He sighs. “I’ll bring them with me soon, I promise. But you know how Luke is, and Reggie’s unsure and Willie says apparently they rely on me to make first steps because I’m ‘brave’ or whatever. I’ll kick their asses and drag them here though, don’t worry.”

“Of the many things that have changed, of course  _ that  _ couldn’t be among them,” Bobby sighs, but gives Alex a thankful smile. Alex gives him a questioning look, to which Bobby sighs again, and puts his sandwich down to lean against the counter across from Alex. “You still don’t see yourself in a realistic light, Lexi. You’re still selling yourself short.”

“I’m not… okay,” Alex mumbles and shakes his head. Willie told him basically the same thing yesterday, so he might actually have to re-examine himself and the boys. Later though, he doesn’t have the emotional capacity for it at the moment.

“We went to the Peters’ house once, where it used to be. Reggie was pretty bummed that they tore down his whole neighbourhood,” he says instead, uncomfortable with the silence now. Bobby nods slowly, and a dull sadness creeps into his eyes again, his shoulder sagging lightly. “They tore it down in ‘03, but Reg’s parents moved out a year after… after you guys died. Got divorced, too.”

Alex bites down on his lip, the question pressing to the forefront of his mind, for Reggie’s sake, and his, and Luke’s as well. “Why didn’t you give some of the money you made to them?”

Bobby stared at him, then gave another one of those bitter, ugly laughs. “Why would I give them money? I put you guys’ name as dedications on the record with our music, and donate some of the money to a few charities, why the fuck do you think should I have given any of your parents money?”

Confusion colours the storm of emotions still raging in Alex a weird shade, an uneasy taste of a painful truth he’s too close to realizing settling on his tongue. Bobby doesn’t look angry, not with him, but lines settle in his face, and he straightens his back and looks Alex directly in the eyes. 

“Alex, you all lived in my garage since you were 16 years old. We were all practically children. That doesn’t happen when you have normal parents. We knew Reggie’s parents were shit, but we didn’t know how much that would have fucked him up later. Hell, he looked uneasy every time a car slowed down in front of the house, and a cup was put down too hard, and he hated it whenever we got loud with each other. His parents didn’t care about him, and used him as a pawn in their fucking arguments. They didn’t deserve to see a penny of the money I made with our songs. I give a monthly amount to an organization that helps children from abusive households.”

Bobby’s voice is steady, and level, his tone neutral. Alex nods slowly. He’s known this, in theory. That the Peters’ were really bad for Reggie, and that Reggie has issues with parental figures, which is why he latched onto Ray with his kind heart and warm smile so fast. But Reggie always felt obligated to say he still loved his parents, even if his voice shook when saying it, and he’s been talking about trying to find them lately. It’s not a good idea. Bobby’s right.

“Luke will be angry at me for saying this because he loves Emily way more than she probably deserves, but his parents don’t deserve any of the money that came from their son’s talent either,” Bobby continues. “Luke ran away from home for half a year and would have stayed away longer, a kid that loves his mother so much doesn’t usually do that. We all know how important music was- is to him, and we both remember how crushed he looked every time she told him she regretted buying that guitar. How hurt he was when she never came to any of our gigs. They didn’t speak to me, at his-” 

Bobby falters for a second, his voice cracking before he continues. “At his funeral. I tried to talk to them, but they didn’t want to talk to me. I tried calling them, but they never answered my calls. I’m sure they loved him, and still do, but if they couldn’t love him with all that came with him, if they couldn’t love  _ him _ , then they don’t deserve the money that he would have made, not from me. He would have forgiven them, but Luke’s always been kinder than I am, and I’m donating to a program that allows low-income and less fortunate kids to play and learn music in his name instead.”

Alex just nods slowly. Bobby’s right. He is. That doesn’t mean it hurts any less, to think of Luke and his gigantic heart and all the love he gave Emily and Mitch, that he never got back with the intensity he deserved.

“Your parents- your parents didn’t look at you after you came out. Your parents ignored you and stopped checking in on you, and when you got sick they didn’t care enough to get you to a doctor. You started living in my garage because you couldn’t bear the silence at home anymore, and I heard you cry yourself to sleep a lot, and they ignored your obvious anxiety, all because you’re gay. They didn’t deserve that money. You know they didn’t. But the kids and teens in the LGBTQ+ friendly homeless shelters I’m donating to do.”

Alex feels ready to cry again, hot tears prickling in his eyes. He’s tried to avoid thinking of his parents since they came back because whenever he does there’s just this numbing pain that jolts through him, not searing like the jolts were, but going deeper, to the core of his being It feels like it might rip him apart. And so Alex tries not to think of them.

“Look, Alex. I’ve made mistakes. A ton of them. I’m not a good person, and I could have done things differently, and I should have, probably. But you guys died and left me sitting in the fallout of that, and you had shitty parents, and I had shitty parents, and I’m trying my best to not make the same mistakes. I know it’s hard to realize you don’t owe your parents shit, you don’t owe them love. I regret a lot of things, but not letting you guys’ parents see any of the money is not one of them.”

Alex nods slowly, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. Bobby sighs shakily, and lets himself fall back against the kitchen counter, turns to look outside. It’s still crazy that he’s got all of this. That he has the money to donate to three charities. That he managed to get to this point. “I don’t- I don’t know if I deserve it, and you’re not obligated to do so, none of you are. But,” Bobby’s voice is quiet and dipped in regret and pain and untypical anxiety. “I hope you can forgive me, for this, one day.”

Alex ponders on that. It surprises him, really, the question. It comes out of the blue. Bobby’s always been bad at voicing his feelings, showing his love through acts and through caring, and apologizing the same way, and asking for help without saying it. He’s come far, so far, and Alex wishes he’d been there to see it, and that they’d all been together for it. He wishes that the Platinum Records wore his, and Reggie’s, and Luke’s names alongside Bobby’s, and that they all shared the money among the four of them, instead of Bobby having all of it and giving some to charities. He wishes that Bobby didn’t have to be the only aged one, and that they’d all been there to see Carrie grow up, and helped co-parent her, and he wishes that they’d gotten to be on tours together. 

He wishes he didn’t have to look at this familiar stranger, and wonder what life would be like if he were alive. He wishes for many things to have gone differently, for the world to not be the way it is and the universe granting him wishes, knowing it’s a thing of impossibility.

He finds many things inside of him when he thinks of Bobby. Love, and grief, pain and warm memories, desperate longing to have the Bobby he died knowing back, and desperate longing to get to know this new Bobby as well as he did the old. The feelings are plenty, and conflicting, but there’s one thing he doesn’t find. 

“I don’t think you have anything to be forgiven, Bobby. It just has to be understood.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want to go visit my parents,” Alex says, and the room around him comes to a standstill. Julie and Reggie have been pouring over the piano for the last thirty minutes to come up with Julie’s notes for a new song, and Luke’s been sitting next to them offering advice where he could, while Alex just fumbled around with his drums, just going with whatever he felt like. Willie stops drawing in their new sketchpad, and the three others look up at him, eyes wide and confusion palpable in the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW/CW: referenced and direct actions of homophobia, references to parental alcohol abuse and child neglect, references to child abuse (arguing parents), references to anxiety, mentions of death of a pet dog  
> once again, many things like the anxiety and alcoholism are based on personal experience
> 
> i hope you enjoy!! :))

“I want to go visit my parents,” Alex says, and the room around him comes to a standstill. Julie and Reggie have been pouring over the piano for the last thirty minutes to come up with Julie’s notes for a new song, and Luke’s been sitting next to them offering advice where he could, while Alex just fumbled around with his drums, just going with whatever he felt like. Willie stops drawing in their new sketchpad, and the three others look up at him, eyes wide and confusion palpable in the air.

It’s been a week since Alex went to see Bobby, and three days since he dragged Reggie and Luke there, so the three of them could also have a heart to heart. More tears were shed, more stories exchanged and they’d talked about their parents a lot. Not Alex, not really, he’d let Luke and Reggie ask Bobby thousands of questions. He’d just sat back and tried not to think about them. 

Luke and Reggie know everything about his parents, intimately, having been there for everything. Willie and Julie know parts, but enough to know things weren’t great in the end. And in the months since they’ve become ghosts he never expressed the desire to see them, never really felt it either, too focused on the band, and Willie, and almost dying again, and Caleb and all the other emotions bullshit. He’s been pressing down these thoughts, burying them in songs and love for his friends and Willie, and the desperate hope for a brighter, more stable future. The conversations with Bobby ruined that, and now his parents are on his mind basically all the time. 

“Are you sure?” Luke asks carefully, standing up straight. Worry creases his brows and weighs down on his voice, and Reggie reaches out and gently takes Luke’s hand. Alex nods slowly. Julie gives him a small smile. “Do you want to talk about why or did you just want to tell us?”

Alex starts twirling a drumstick between his fingers absentmindedly, looking to Willie who locks stricken but gives him as much of an encouraging smile as they can muster. “I’ve… Bobby talked about them and I’ve been thinking about it. I don’t want to reconnect with them or anything I just… I just want to see what they’re up to now.”

“Want us to come with you?” Reggie gets up from the piano bench and drags Julie and Luke over to Alex with him. He’s worrying his lower lip between his teeth and Julie seems to notice, leaning into his side to distract him. “I’m not sure yet, sorry.”

“Don’t apologize for that, it took me ages to even work up the courage to go to my parents’ house,” Willie says, putting his sketchbook aside and joining the band at the drums. The four of them stand close by but don’t crowd in on him, and Alex’s chest is tight only because of the thought of seeing his parents and not because he’s uncomfortable with his friends.

“I don’t even know if they still live in the same house,” Alex says and the realization stuns him for a moment. Julie lets go of Reggie and pulls out her phone. “I can look it up if you want?”

She finds his parents’ new address in a matter of seconds, and Alex’s stomach suddenly feels as though his stomach is filled with ice. He’s actually going to do this, he’s pretty sure, but now, though. He looks up at the others who all watch him with worry and care, and who he knows are there if he just reached out. “I’m not going today, I don’t think. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“Take all the time you need, buddy, we’ll be there if you want us to be,” Reggie says. Alex nods again, then finally gets up from behind his drum kit. “Band hug?”

“You don’t need to ask for that, idiot,” Luke mumbles fondly, but he pulls Julie and Reggie in, and Alex reaches out for Willie who still hesitates sometimes, unsure whether they’re included in that or not. He joins in immediately, wrapping an arm around Alex’s waist and the other around Julie’s shoulder, and pulls the group together.

Alex leans into the touch, leans his cheek against the top of Reggie’s head and closes his eyes for a second. Anxiety still sits in his stomach like a tightly coiled snake ready to attack, but it doesn’t feel like as much of an imminent danger anymore, with his friends holding him close, and ready to be there for him should he need it. He’s scared of what he’ll see, scared of possibly seeing again, but he’s had a safety net for a while and that safety net has only gotten stronger since he died. He can get through this, and after that, hopefully, be mostly at peace with his afterlife.

___

  
“You’ve got this, we’ll be right here,” Luke says, and squeezes his shoulder. Alex nods, tries to keep his hands steady and his breathing regular. The house is in a different suburb from where he grew up, a two-story classic American thing with no fence and a big driveway, a manicured lawn. It looks like he expected it to. It scares him.

The band and Willie are leaning against the car Julie’s borrowed from Ray, since she couldn’t just poof here like the four of them can, but Alex wanted her to be here too. They’ve promised to wait outside for him until he’s done, and he couldn’t be more thankful for them. The house looms up in front of him, but he has his friends in his back, and they’ll be there to catch him if he needs them to.

“Okay, okay. I’ve got this. I’ll just look around for a bit,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets to keep from picking at the skin. The four give him thumbs-up, and encouraging smiles, and Julie reaches out to squeeze his hand. “Take all the time you need, Lex, we’ll wait.”

Alex nods again, to himself, to them, and crosses the street. The name Mercer on the mailbox shines like a beacon to him, and he stops to look at it for a moment. It’s new, and polished, not like the dented thing he always got the papers out of when he was a kid. The driveway is empty, the sun high in the sky. He wonders whether his parents still go to work or are just out visiting friends. His grandparents are probably dead as well, he realizes. They most definitely are, they’d been old already when he’d died.

It feels weird, to stand at the front door of a house he’s never seen before, and kind of illegal too. It’s not like the police could actually arrest Alex for breaking and entering, because he’s a ghost, and because he won’t be breaking anything. He just has to walk through the door. His chest feels incredibly tight, and he’s pulled his hands out of his pockets at some point apparently, because they’re pulling at the hem of his pink hoodie. Alex turns to look at the guys, and Julie, and Willie, all still leaning against the car on this quiet suburban street. They all wave, and Reggie raises both his hands in an exaggerated gesture to show he’s giving Alex another thumbs up. He’s got this. 

Alex takes a deep breath, and steps through the door.

-

Janine and Colin Mercer had been good parents. Alex had always thought out of all the parents he knew, he was luckiest with his. Since he was their only child, they showered him with all the love in the world. One of his first memories was with them, laughing uncontrollably while they swung him between them on a visit to the zoo. 

They loved him, a lot, and they made it a priority that he knew it. His mother always let him help in the kitchen, and snuck him small snacks that they swore to keep as secrets from his father. Whenever his father went on business trips he always brought back a little souvenir, and the board in Alex’s room began filling with magnets from all over the US.

His father went camping with him, just the two of them, and taught him how to fish even if Alex didn’t like it, and his mother danced with him in the kitchen while cooking dinner and sang with him.

When he said he wanted to learn how to sing at five years old they found him a vocal coach, and then they got him his first drumkit when he was seven and in awe of the teen in their neighbourhood who sometimes babysat him and let him play around with his drums a bit. His mom always ruffled his hair and kissed the plasters on his knees, and his dad laughed at his bad attempts at riding a bike and promised to teach him how to drive a car once he was old enough.

When he got older they continued to support him in his wish to pursue music, and cleaned out a room in the cellar for him to practice on his drums in, and his dad sometimes took him on business trips with him, if they were on the weekends. They got him a dog from a local shelter, an older golden retriever called Sunshine, who quickly became Alex’s best friend. It was Sunshine and him against the world, with his parents at his back.

Then he met Bobby when he was seven, and Luke and Reggie a year later, and suddenly it was the four of them against the world, riding through their neighbourhoods on old bikes and running around in the dirt outside the suburbs. 

Janine and Colin Mercer had been good parents, and Alex had realized that at the age of nine, when Reggie let them stay over for the first time because Bobby didn’t want them to, and Luke’s and Alex’s parents had said they should try to spend time at each other’s houses evenly. Alex’s parents fought sometimes, but never like this.They didn’t yell through the night, even though the Peters’ seemed to strain to keep more quiet, and they didn’t throw what sounded like a glass, and Alex cried when his parents fought. Reggie just curled up in a corner in his bed and buried his head in his pillow, and pulled his blanket over himself. He didn’t cry, but when they crawled in next to him and abandoned their mattresses on the floor, he pressed into them and buried his face deep in Bobby’s shoulder and held Alex’s hand so tight it hurt. They never stayed over at Reggie’s house again after that.

Alex told his mom what had happened the next morning and she got a sad look in her eyes, and the next time she saw Reggie she told him he was welcome at their house at any time. Alex’s parents were good parents to him, and good parents when his friends came over. His mother made sure to know everyone’s favourite snacks and meals, and kept those in stock, and Alex’s dad took all four of them camping during the summer holidays. At least one of them was always there when the not yet in-sync and well practiced precursor of Sunset Curve played at school assemblies or talent shows. 

Years passed, and they were good parents to Alex, and his friends. His dad bought and set up an inflatable pool in their backyard and memories of them trying to dunk each other while his mother laughed from the porch and his dad brought out a tray with lemonade and popsicles. They had a small cupboard full of clothes the boys left behind at their house, and they all pretended not to notice that the inflatable mattresses were now stored in the hallway instead of the attic, and that there was peanut butter in the house because it was Bobby’s favourite snack even if Alex was allergic. 

The band played in the Mercer’s basement, and slept in Alex’s room, and walked Sunshine together, and Alex’s dad ruffled all their hair and Alex’s mom told them all she was proud of them when they got good grades or finally figured out a passage for a song. Alex realized how lucky he was with his parents when he was 13 and Reggie showed up at their doorstep with a hastily packed back and tear stained cheeks, and his mother just hugged him and Alex made hot chocolate, and his dad got the inflatable mattress ready. Reggie was a regular guest after that. 

He realized he was lucky because Bobby showed up smelling like the beer Alex’s dad sometimes let him have a sip of, and cold cigarette smoke, and didn’t say anything just sat on the sofa with them, leaning into Alex’s side and gripping his hands so tight his knuckles went wide, and how Bobby seemed to bloom under praise from Alex’s parents and gave small smiles when Alex’s dad didn’t drink his daily beer until they’d gone upstairs. 

He realized how lucky he was when Luke cried and told them his mother didn’t like his music, and that his dad had said they never should have bought him his guitar. Alex watched as his parents exchanged quiet looks, and hugged Luke and took care in asking him about his songwriting, and buying him guitar picks, and making sure he felt loved.

Janine and Coline Mercer had been good parents. They’d been open-minded and went to demonstrations of the anti-nuclear movement, and shook their heads at reports of antisemitism and racism, and made sure Alex was open-minded and kind to everyone. 

They cared about the climate, and renewable energy, and people and education. They told him to believe in science and argued with their Republican parents and neighbours, and they welcomed the black family from three houses down with open arms and made sure to invite them to barbecues and neighbourhood parties.

They told Alex to be himself, and taught him the values of individuality, and to trust in himself, and to not be ashamed.

Janine and Colin Mercer had not been perfect, but they’d been good parents. They fought sometimes, and got loud, and Alex hated it. His dad traveled a lot. His mom spent evenings away sometimes. But they stayed together and they didn’t throw things, and they didn’t drink all the time.    
They didn’t believe Alex when he told them that his chest constricted everytime he was called on in class, and that he couldn’t help but panic when he was supposed to hold a presentation. They didn’t believe him when he told them he sometimes couldn’t breathe and had days where he couldn’t think without worrying, and that that was why he skipped school sometimes. But they were good parents, and they wanted the best for him, that was what they told him.

They started scolding him for crying, and still dancing around the kitchen, and they began to put the other boys in the guest room instead of letting them stay in his room, and Alex sometimes noticed the looks his dad gave him and his boys when they cuddled together on the couch at 14 the same way they’d done when they were nine, and that those looks were disapproving. He noticed that his mother sorted out the two pink shirts he owned, and replaced them with blue ones. But they were good parents, and they probably just wanted him to act more mature. 

Alex trusted his parents, and told them almost anything. He loved his parents. They loved him.    
He still told his friends that he was gay first, when he was a few months away from his fifteenth birthday, and his parents were out of the house for the night, so they all slept on mattresses in Alex’s room in a blanket fort that had taken them way too long to build. It went well, and Alex cried a bit, and they hugged him, and it felt good. 

Bobby began using the garage at his parents’ house more often, and they helped him decorate it. Alex’s dad helped them get an old couch from a yard sale into it. Alex began spending some evenings and some nights there. 

But. Alex trusted his parents, and they’d always told him to be himself, and to stand up for himself. And they had been good parents. So the pain that came with the way their faces fell on his fifteenth birthday, and the way his mother’s lips curled downwards the same way they did when she saw something disgusting on TV and his father’s grip tightened on his glass, the same way it did when he got annoyed with his parents at Thanksgiving was unexpected. 

Alex spent the night of his fifteenth birthday in the arms of his best friends, sobbing. 

That first night after he’d said it, it felt like a dagger of hot steel had been rammed into his chest. It was almost unbearable. In the days, and weeks, and months that followed that dagger was driven through his chest, and into him, and finally hit his core so hard he nearly shattered.

His mother stopped singing when he came into the kitchen, and his father didn’t bring him magnets anymore. They stopped talking when he entered the room, and dinner was a near silent affair now, only the clinking of cutlery against plates and the occasional request to hand something over. His father didn’t look at him anymore, and his mother didn’t look him in the eyes. They stopped wishing him a good night, and good luck when he told them he’d be out late for a gig. They didn’t acknowledge his friends anymore, when they came to practice, and didn’t say anything when they slowly began moving out the instruments from the basement room, piece by piece because none of them could drive yet, and Alex’s father didn’t react when he asked for help.

His father didn’t go camping with them that summer. His mother didn’t tell them where the 4th of July party would be held. Alex came home from school one day to find Sunshine had been euthanized because of a tumor nobody had told him about. Alex started spending more and more time at the studio, as they now called the old garage at Bobby’s. They never seemed worried when he didn’t come home for a few days. 

It was like Alex had stopped existing, had become a ghost to them, just wandering the halls of the house quietly and unseen, a nuisance at most. His sixteenth birthday passed, and his father never offered to teach him how to drive. Alex became a stranger in his own family and found a sort-of-family in the boys that had once been strangers.

He had nights in which he just sobbed, torn apart and shattered by the grief that came with the quiet of last night’s dinner, and he was hastily and clumsily put back together, and held together as one by his boys. He moved out just short of his seventeenth birthday, and the people who were supposed to be his parents didn’t spare him a glance when he left with his backpack full and a suitcase in hand.

Janine and Colin Mercer had been good parents, until Alex told them he was gay, and then they hadn’t been parents anymore at all. 

-

Alex still feels the remnants of that pain now, as he stands in an unfamiliar hallway, the light dim because there’s no window here, and everything is just illuminated by what comes around the corner. He feels like a stranger. He  _ is  _ a stranger in this house, has never set foot in it, and the people who live here have treated him like a stranger long before he actually became one. It smells vaguely like flowers, and the wooden floor is hard underneath his shoes. It doesn’t creak when he moves. Alex takes a slow step into the house, and a deep breath to go along with it. 

There are pictures on the walls, and he steps closer. Something drops deep in his stomach, cold and dark and ugly. It’s a picture of him, at ten, maybe. A camping trip, his arms around Sunshine’s neck and a smile so wide it can only come from a child that hasn’t needed to worry about much of anything yet. The frame is golden, and clean, and there’s a picture right next to it, of him at eleven, his arms slung around Reggie’s and Luke’s shoulders, back when Bobby was the tallest, and all four of them are grinning into the camera like maniacs. It’s a picture from the basement music room, Alex’s first drum kit still visible in the background.

His heart clenches and there’s the same world-shattering pain again, that he felt first on his fifteenth birthday, now only slightly less painful than it was back then. 

It’s a wall of photos, directly in the hallway, and most of them are of him, and the guys, but mostly him. All framed and clean and hanging straight. Clearly taken care of. He doesn’t know what to make of that.

He inspects the pictures, memories caught on shiny paper, glimpses of happier times, of less stressful times printed in dulling colours. Back when he still felt like he could take an unhindered breath, and his parents loved him and he was alive. It feels weird, now. To look at all of this, to be reminded of the time he was an actual, living, corporeal being, visible all the time and aging and growing and evolving. It’s weird. It feels like another life. Technically it is. He’s changed so much since then, so many things have changed since then, all lost to the rush of time, this old life too slippery for him to hold onto.

Alex finally steps around the corner into the living area and stops short. There’s a side table with a big framed photo of him in the middle. A vase of flowers stands next to it, pink tulips and white lilies clustered together. He steps closer, forgetting how to breathe. There are drumsticks on the side table, the ones he painted black when Luke wanted to go full heavy metal for a month at 13. There’s the ticket to their first ever time they played more than one song at an event for their school. Baby pictures of him, and a small and bad drawing of his family he made in kindergarten. Alex can’t really focus on much of it. There’s a small paper Pride flag, lying next to his picture. 

He stares at it for a while, a clock ticking lazily and as if nothing’s wrong somewhere in the background. Alex reaches out slowly, his fingers trembling ever so slightly, to brush against the rainbow on paper. He picks it up. Then suddenly his chest feels too tight and he realizes he hasn’t taken a breath in too long. Bright rays of sun filter in from the outside, hitting the floor in the square shape of the gaps in the curtains, pale yellow columns that provide a spotlight for the dust particles dancing in the air. Another rainbow catches his eyes and Alex finally steps away from the side table, the  _ shrine _ , or whatever the fuck that is, to the couch table and sees another tiny rainbow flag, this one on a toothpick, sticking out of a succulent’s pot. 

It feels surreal. Alex moves through the house faster now, and there’s so much of him everywhere, pictures and memories of him in every room and crappy childhood drawings pinned on the fridge. There’s a fucking Sunset Curve demo. 

And there’s Pride stuff. So much of it. Rainbow glasses and a flyer for some GSA for adults Club in the area. Alex barely manages to make it upstairs, where he stumbles upon a picture of his parents. Janine and Colin Mercer, older and grey now, in white T-Shirts, grinning at the camera. “Parent Hugs” the shirts read, and there is a rainbow painted on his mother’s cheek, and he can see people with flags, not just the rainbow one, in the background. It’s a Pride Parade. A recent one, judging by the smartphones in their hands. 

A gasp resonates through the house, sounding more and more like a dry sob the longer nothing follows, and then Alex is running down the stairs and throwing himself through the wall and onto the lawn, stumbling through pink rose bushes. He’s panting, and suddenly the sun outside is too bright. 

There’s something deep inside of him that’s churning, and bubbling and searing hot. 

“Hey, Alex, are you okay?” Luke asks, and Alex looks up to see the four of them, still waiting by the car, worry etched into their features. Luke takes a step closer to him. Alex doesn’t want him there. He doesn’t want to tell any of them, not now, he doesn’t want to talk and the pity or whatever. He needs to go. There’s only one person to talk to.

“Bobby,” he says, and then he poofs out, hearing the faint “Alex-wait!” from Reggie before he appears in Bobby’s living room. It’s still clean and pristine and weird, and Bobby is still not entirely his Bobby anymore or again, because things can never be the same again. There are rainbows everywhere in his parent’s house. They go to Pride. 

Bobby stares at him, halfway through the glass door into his garden, eyes wide in shock “Alex?”

“Since when?” he grits out. His voice is hoarse and his teeth grind against each other when his mouth is closed, and his jaw is so tense it almost hurts. Bobby steps back inside, still looking confused. “What are you talking about? Since when what?”

“I went to my parents’ house. Since when?”

And Bobby’s face falls, crumbles into guilt and pain. “They went to Pride for the first time three years after.”

Alex isn’t an angry person. He’s anxious, and he gets annoyed, but he doesn’t get angry. He always thought the only thing he felt when he thought about his parents and how their stupid fucking homophobia made them not his parents anymore was pain, and grief. That what their sudden ignorance of his existence did to him was ram a dagger into him and try to crack him open and apart like that. Now he realizes that there was always something underneath that crack. 

It’s hot and thick and all-consuming, bubbling up and out through that crack and flooding into him. It’s lava bursting out of a cold and hardened stream with bright oranges and reds and yellows, unstoppable and ready to burn its path wherever it wants to go. Alex feels it trickle into his bloodstream.

“Alex... I’m sorry, I should have told you-” Bobby is interrupted by the sound of 

Luke and Reggie poofing in. Alex fixates on the ground, glares at it.    
“Dude, what’s going on?” Reggie asks, voice soft and tentative. Alex turns to him, and both of his friends shrink back. He tries to smooth out his features, and to keep his voice quiet and steady. “They seem to accept me now. There were Pride flags everywhere.”

His voice is quiet, and unsteady, and he feels the rage in it, and balls his hands into fists. The other three exchange a look. “They-” his voice breaks. “They go to Pride Parades to give out parent hugs. I saw a photo.”    
Alex breaks, too. 

An angry yell tears it’s way out of his throat, clawing upwards and out, and he startles even himself with it. “They didn’t even fucking  _ look  _ at me! She stopped talking to me! He never fucking taught me how to drive, and he  _ promised _ !”

His voice is loud, and raw, and the anger burns deep inside him, a seemingly endless thing that just keeps coming, and adding on, bubbling and hot, and filling his whole body until he can’t feel anything but it’s nearly unbearable heat. He’s on fire and he has no idea how to put it out. 

“They go out and hug queer kids and people and they couldn’t even touch me anymore after I came out! They couldn’t look me in the eyes, or tell me they loved me, they couldn’t wish me luck, they couldn’t support me anymore and now this? Now they build a fucking shrine and put tons of flags everywhere?” he draws a shuddering breath, and realizes he still has the paper pride flag from the side table in his hands. It’s crumpled now. He hurls it at the glass wall. Then there’s an angry sob that fights its way out, and he swears. 

It feels a bit like he’s choking on his anger, and on the unfairness of it all. On the rage he feels, because his fucking parents couldn’t accept him, their  _ son _ . They couldn’t accept him, and now do all of this shit. It’s unfair. It’s so, so unfair. 

He brings his palms up and presses them over his eyes, digging in deep, until it hurts. He doesn’t know what he expected from his parents. But it wasn’t this. “Fuck!” he says. Then louder, and louder again, until he’s not even yelling words anymore, he’s just screaming, and hot angry tears run down his face, feeling like they’ll burn into his skin and down to his bone, and tear every last bit of him away until he’s nothing but bones and molten rage. He hurls his snapback, too, and screams again, and keeps swearing, because it’s just. Anger. He’s just angry. At his parents, and at the world, at being dead, and not having one of his fucking best friends by his side, not being able to be by one of his best friend’s side, and at Caleb for fucking them over, and the world and his parents. Most of all his parents.

He yells for so long that his voice gets hoarse and his throat hurts, and his fingers hurt from being clenched into too tight fists, and his body hurts from how tense he is, and his  _ everything  _ hurts. 

Then Alex collapses onto the floor, unable to go on, and he just cries. It’s no longer just angry tears and sobs, it’s also pain again, and grief, and still anger, so, so much of it. But at least he doesn’t feel like he’ll burn and burn and not stop until there’s nothing left of him anymore. It’s at this point that the others approach him, and tentatively put hands on his shoulders and arms and then hug him when he doesn’t shrug them off. Reggie hugs him from the front, a soft hand in his neck and Alex sobs against his shoulder while Bobby rubs circles into his back, and Luke whispers quiet “I’m sorry”s into his hair. It’s reminiscent of that night back in 1993, when his parents stopped seeing him.

It’s like this that Julie and Willie find them, huddled on the floor, and Alex sobbing while the other three try to cry as quietly as possible. Alex is only aware that they are when he finally looks up and sees their red eyes and tear streaked faces. “Let’s get you guys off the floor,” Julie says quietly, and they do. 

Alex is framed by his old band and his new band and his boyfriend, leaning into them for support to avoid falling apart once again. It’s weird. There’s still this undercurrent of the same pain he felt back then, the same pain he felt until he stepped into his parents house, but there’s anger now, layering on top of it. He tries to explain it between gasps for air that rock his entire body, with Luke and Reggie holding a hand each and Bobby with a steady hand between his shoulders, and Julie with her hand on his arm, rubbing soft circles into the fabric of his hoodie, and Willie’s hand in his neck, a light and reassuring touch. 

They all move with him when he does, as if they’re all swaying on the same current of his emotions, unable to stay still, while his mind races after his feelings to try to articulate himself.

“It’s just unfair,” he whispers finally. He’s afraid that they’ll judge him for how he feels, that they’ll tell him it’s good his parents accept him now. “It’s so unfair,” he repeats.  Reggie nods with his cheek against Alex’s shoulder. “It is, it really is.”

Julie moves closer, clambering into Luke’s lap to do so, and leans into both of them, propping her chin up on Alex’s shoulder. He glances at her and sees her eyes shine wet, and that her face is puffy, but there’s the determination burning in the dark brown of her irises that he knows so well. Or maybe it’s also anger. He’s not sure yet, and his vision steadily blurs with new tears. “Do you want to tell us how you feel? Maybe it’ll help getting your thoughts sorted,” she suggests in a soft voice.

“I don’t even know where to start,” he admits. All their grips tighten on him, only barely, and then another sob ripples through them all. Willie’s thumb runs up and down two vertebra, a steadying motion much like Julie is doing. “Are you angry?” they ask, voice as soft as Julie’s was, although there’s tension in it. Alex just nods.

“You’re still grieving them basically abandoning you?” Luke asks now. All of their voices are soft and quiet and carry sorrow and worry and care in them. And an undertone he can’t decipher. He nods again, and sighs. His voice still trembles when he speaks, and if his throat wasn’t raw already he feels like yelling again. “I just… I’m angry at them for that, I don’t think I was before. I don’t know how to feel apart from that.”

“You’re allowed to just feel angry,” Bobby says quietly, and the others murmur in agreement. Suddenly that hidden emotion in their voices and their caring touches are too much and Alex springs up, feeling bad. He turns to look at them, wants to be angry at them, too, and to argue with someone who’ll argue back, but they all just look sad. 

“Fuck,” he says instead and then begins pacing. They watch him do it, quietly, letting him work through his thoughts. The anger comes back in full force now, bubbling up again, hot and searing oranges and reds, but he thinks he knows what they mean now. And the tears shoot back into his eyes.

“They stopped talking to me for more than absolute necessities when I was 15,” Alex says and he’s surprised by how calm and steady his voice is. He stops pacing and clenches his hands together, his fingernails digging into his palms. “When I died… we hadn’t spoken in four months when I died.”

Bobby and Luke and Reggie know this story. They experienced it. They were there for every bit of it. Julie and Willie weren’t. But they still nod, their jaws tense and their eyes set with something that starts looking a lot like the anger Alex feels boiling inside of him. A crater lake of a volcano, finally free again after years of lying dormant under a layer of cold and hard grief that had blocked it from the world. Protected the world from it as well, perhaps. 

“I died. I fucking  _ died  _ thinking they hated me,” Alex’s voice is louder again, and his breath once again more labored. His hands shake when he moves them to emphasize his point. “I died in that fucking ambulance hearing Luke and Reggie die, and I had to wonder whether my own fucking parents would grieve for me, or miss me. Whether they’d feel just a fraction of the pain I had to go through when they decided to treat me like I wasn’t there son anymore.”

He takes a shuddering breath and wipes at his cheeks angrily because tears are still spilling over burning hot in his eyes and inching their way down his face. He remembers his last moments. The pure panic of what awaited him, the pain of hearing Luke and Reggie moan in pain and yell for him, the terrifying feeling of slipping and slipping and scrambling for purchase but not finding any, knowing he was going to fall with nothing to stop him and nothing to catch him. The distant thought of Bobby. 

He remembers seeing a few flashes of his life, of his parents’ smiling faces and of Sunshine and the guys, and the disappointment and disgust on his parents’ faces. The wrecking pain of not only the battery acid eating through him from the inside, but also of not knowing how they’d react. Of the possibility that they wouldn’t care. That they’d think good riddance. His last thoughts hadn’t gone to his friends or the life he couldn’t live. They went to his parents and wondering how little he meant to them after all. 

“I don’t… I spent years of my life regretting coming out to them and wishing I hadn’t. I spent two. Years. Two years. Asking myself how things would be if I hadn’t, if me and the guys would have had proper meals and a safer way of transportation than the beat-up van Bobby got. If we could have slept in a heated house in winter,” his breath is coming in harsh intervals again, and his hands keep shaking, and his whole body is so tense again it hurts. “I know you didn’t blame me, but I did. I did. And I fucking died feeling guilty, and feeling like they hated me, and I… I don’t know how to feel now.”

He starts pacing again. It’s disgusting, but he wipes his runny nose on the fabric of his hoodie, and rakes his hands through his hair, the anger making him as restless as his anxiety usually does. Briefly, distantly, Alex realizes he doesn’t feel any anxiety at the moment. A bitter chuckle bubbles out of him, an ugly sound he doesn’t like coming from himself, and he stops again, smiling bitterly at the others on the sofa. “Who knew that all I needed to get rid of my anxiety was overwhelming anger?”

“Alex…” Luke starts, his voice thick with tears. “No, no it’s fine Luke.”

“It’s not fine, Alex. You don’t have to tell us anything about how you’re feeling, but whatever you are feeling, you’re right in doing so,” Willie says. 

“I’m angry,” Alex says immediately. “I don’t know if I should be feeling anything other than that, but I’m actually really fucking angry.”

Julie gives him an encouraging nod, and Alex looks at Reggie and Luke, who’ve always liked dealing with anger the least. They nod, and Reggie’s jaw is so clenched that Alex knows he’s angry too, and the line of Luke’s mouth tells him the same. He still can’t read Bobby’s expressions as well as he could when they were all the same age, but the angry crease between his eyebrows is still the same.

“You know. Maybe I should be happy that they accept people being gay now. Maybe I should. But I’m not,” he starts. And the anger is there again, and it’s flowing again. And now he knows it won’t stop until he’s gotten it all out. 

“You know, it’s great that they’re there supporting queer people at Pride. It is! It would be if it weren’t for the fact that they never fucking supported me when I was alive. They would barely touch me, barely fucking look at me, and now there’s a stupid fucking shrine of me in their house to make them feel better or something, and Pride flags everywhere as if that was going to make up for the fact that I died, and they hated who I was because I’m gay.”

Alex lets out another harsh breath, that mixes with a sob and hurts in his chest, and his hands are still shaking.

“They couldn’t accept me after raising me and practically raising the guys, and telling me I should be confident and unashamedly me, no matter what, until I was, and then it was wrong. They were open-minded and ‘woke’ and tolerant until I was gay and then suddenly they were just fucking liars all their life. All of my life, too. And it’s not like I don’t know that people can change. I know, that’s a thing. That people can grow and change their opinions on topics.”

Another shuddering breath taken in silence. He’s nearly there he thinks. Nearly at the core of this anger. 

“People can grow and change but I had to fucking  _ die  _ for them to do so. I had to die at 17 and leave behind one of my best friends, and a promising career, and music, and  _ living  _ and- I had to leave behind basically everything and I had to  _ die  _ for them to change their fucking minds. I had to be dead for them to see that they were wrong and assholes and fucking horrible people and it took the stop of my existence for them to change!”

He’s yelling again, and his pacing has brought him to the crumpled ball of paper, of the flag from the stupid shrine. He picks it up again, and tears at it with shaking fingers, and it doesn’t rip at first, so he rips at it harder, with all the might and the anger and the power he has, and he lets out another frustrated yell until it rips into and he throws the two parts away, hurls them into the empty room, where they just fall on the ground with a quiet sound that isn’t nearly loud enough distract him from the rush of blood in his ears.

“They probably tell themselves that they’re doing this in my name and that that’s a good thing. They probably try to ease their conscience by telling themselves doing that stuff in honour of my memory makes them better people. That I would forgive them for how they treated me because they saw they were wrong and changed and are now different people.”

He spits the words out now, getting quieter, his anger no longer hot and bubbling and pouring out of him like lava. It’s calmer now, deeper, not hatred but bitter, dark, concentrated anger. It feels a lot like venom.

“I.. I died. I died and then they changed, even if I begged them to see a different side of things when I was still alive. It was my death that changed things. Not me. Not their  _ son  _ begging for understanding and acceptance. My  _ death _ . I don’t think I have it in me to forgive them for that. I don’t want to forgive them for that. I-”

“You don’t have to forgive them,” Luke interrupts. Alex turns to see Luke on his feet, the muscles in his crossed arms flexing. He stares Alex directly in the eyes. 

“You shouldn’t forgive them either,” Reggie says, and he gets up to, same steely look in his eyes. 

“You don’t owe them your forgiveness, Alex. You don’t,” Bobby says. 

“I- what?” he starts. 

“Just because they changed doesn’t mean you need to forgive them. You suffered a lot because of them. We saw you suffer, Alex, we were there. We were all kids and we tried to fix you, which wasn’t our job, it was theirs. They should have made sure you ate and went to school and they should have accepted you, but they didn’t. They acted like you didn’t exist, and when you died and I came to them begging for help, because they were the only nice adults I’d ever known they closed the door in my face. You don’t owe them shit, Alex,” Bobby’s voice is cold and angry and sounds a lot like Alex feels, and he’s crying again, or still crying, all of them are. 

“He’s right, you don’t owe them shit. You don’t owe them anything, Alex. Some people would tell you you do, to give them the benefit of the doubt because of different times, but that doesn’t excuse much. Just because they changed doesn’t erase how they treated you, and how they hurt you. You don’t owe them your forgiveness or your time or your thoughts, or  _ anything _ ,” Willie says. Alex hasn’t heard them speak that way before. His voice is calm but drenched in the venom of cold rage that has filled his veins now instead of the burning hot lava that made him want to tear the world down in an attempt to get it out.

“You don’t have to forgive them, Alex. I wouldn’t, and I don’t think you should, either. Like you said, it took them your death and then some time to figure out they were assholes. They caused you tremendous pain, and still do. Don’t feel like you have to forgive them for being good allies and good  _ parents  _ too late. You don’t.” Julie’s voice is the calmest out of all of them, only a slight crack at the end.

Alex realizes that the anger he recognized in all of them was the same, although maybe slightly different, one he felt. Anger at his parents and for what they did. It knocks the wind out of him, and he sinks to the floor once again, a renewed wave of sobs gripping him and pulling him in. 

They’re at his side in seconds, supporting him, holding him over the surface of that turbulent water of his emotions that could drag him down and down until he can’t get back up again. Their light touches and soft reassurances are buoys that keep him afloat and alive until he can find land again. 

“You don’t need your parents, Lex. You have us. You always did and you always will,” Luke mumbles into his shoulder. Alex nods and manages a sound of agreement. 

“Family isn’t what we’re born into, kid, it’s what we make of it, and we are here for you,” Bobby says. It only makes Alex cry harder.

“We’ve got each other’s backs, always. We’ve always got each other, we always had each other, and I won’t let anything different happen,” Reggie kisses his temple and Alex shares a synchronized harsh breath with him, close enough to a sob.

“Family is who we choose to love, not who we are tethered to by blood. You have no obligation to see your parents as part of your family just because they raised you, you can choose who you want, and I hope that one day you choose me to be a part of it,” Julie says, and she’s crying almost as hard as Alex is, and cries only harder when he gets out a small snort. “You already are,” he says.

“You’re not perfect, nobody is, and we don’t need you to be. We need you to be yourself, because that’s the best You you can be. Just you. That’s what family does, accept each other, no questions asked,” Willie finally says. He leans forward and kisses Alex’s forehead, rests their own against his for a moment. Alex nods. Alex cries, and scrambles for them all, for all of his family to come in closer.

In a way he’s always been aware of it, that they were his family. The guys have been his brothers for almost as long as he knew them, and Julie has become a little sister to him faster than he could blink, and Willie is Willie.

And all of them are right. He’s still angry at his parents, and it still hurts, and he doubts he’ll ever be rid of these feelings. But he has a family now, a real family, that loves him, and that holds him while he cries, and that cries with him. He has a family and they have family in him. 

Alex is dead, and will probably always be a little anxious. But Alex has people who know that, and who know him, and who accept that, who accept him and who feel emotions with him and for him, and who he’d die for again, who’d die for him. He has a loving family. And that’s better than what some people get in their entire lifespan, he thinks. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated! :))  
> english isn't my first language, i apologize for any mistakes in grammar and spelling, but also grammarly didn't correct everything so i blame that  
> if you feel like talking/yelling, about jatp or in just general, you can find me on tumblr as [on-irratia](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/on-irratia)  
> have a good day/ night/ rest of time! :D


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